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Time sync within domain servers and workstations

I think I have confused myself beyond belief or I am not comprehending this the right way, so I am reaching out to the experts for some help and guidance. The problem I am havnig is only some of the workstatins within my domain are an hour behind after daylight savings time (EST). I have done everything from 'net time' to see where the workstation is getting its time from, to trying registry changes on the servers and group policies to try and fix the problem. Some background, I have 4 DC's (Lets call them A, B, C, and D) in a child domain. I have no access to make any changes within the forrest, and the PDC of the forrest resides in the UK. Three of my DC's (A, B, C) including my domains PDC (A) look to the PDC of the forrest per the 'w32tm /monitor' command. My remaining DC (D) looks at the child domain PDC (A), I am not sure if this is right and the others are wrong, the time is right on this last DC (D). This is where I think the problem is, the workstations that are an hour behind, when I do a 'net time', they point to this DC (D), and give me this from any workstation and server including my domains PDC:

Current time at \\DomaniControllerD is 3/23/2011 12:55 PM
Local Time <GMT-4:00> at \\DomaniControllerD is 3/23/2011 1:55 PM

So basically how can I get my servers setup to sync time the proper way and then have this filter down to the workstations?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Philip Elder

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MrMagina

ASKER

Is this something that would have to be done on a per workstation basis, or could it be distributed through WSUS?

SOLUTION

Mike Kline

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Philip Elder

WSUS will have a catalogue and status for the DST updates in your org.

Philip

MrMagina

ASKER

Thanks guys, I am going to work on this and let you know how I made out.

MrMagina

ASKER

I was able to apply the patch and also distribute it through my WSUS and all seems to be working just fine, so thank you for your help. One last question to follow up with one of my problems. Why do three fo my four servers look to the forest PDC and the one DC looks at the Child domain PDC?

Sigurdur Haraldsson

In every domain there's a DC holding the PDC Emulator role. That DC is the timesource for the rest of the DCs in the domain. The PDC Emulator should then be configured to look outside the domain for it's timesource.

If the setup is as you say, then someone must have configured them to look at other DCs as a timesource. It makes a certain sense to let the subdomain PDCs look to the forest domain PDC but is not necessary.

MrMagina

ASKER

Right that I understand, but its only one of the four DC's looking to the Child PDC rather than like the others looking at the Forrest PDC

sandeep1025

Try installing the Domain Time Client II , the Full client on a server and the thin client workstations , configure the workstations to refer to the Domain Time server , you can configure the Domain Time server to sync with an external source for e.g. time.ntp.org